9 ms·

Instagram Dropping Foursquare for Facebook Places

47 points by wlindner 12y ago

mcnully 12y ago
Facebook dropping Foursquare for Facebook Places
- wlindner 12y ago
  Bingo.
ceejayoz 12y ago
Seems like a no-brainer. Facebook owning Instagram means this is just Facebook ditching a competitor's product for their own.
- wlindner 12y ago
  After Facebook acquired Instagram they were really clear that they wanted them to stay independent. I wonder how "independently" they made this decision to switch to Facebook Places instead of Foursquare. Instagram ads are most likely just Facebook's new ad platform. Facebook just removed their Camera app from the app store (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2457866,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2457866,00.asp) because Instagram IS their Camera app.
  - potatolicious 12y ago
    > "After Facebook acquired Instagram they were really clear that they wanted them to stay independent." Snort. Giggle. Boy have I heard that one before. Everyone says that about every acquisition that isn't an acquihire. Hell, a lot of the time they even mean it. I have yet to see a single acquisition that promised independence and autonomy actually maintain it for an extended period of time (say, multiple years).
  - randomdrake 12y ago
    I can't think of any recent acquisitions where the same type of lies weren't uttered. "We're so happy to be joining Billion Corp. We feel that they will let us stay independent and stick to our goals. We will continue to provide the same awesome experience you all came to know and love before we sold out." "We're so happy to be acquiring talent instead of finding it. We will totally not, not make their project theirs instead of ours, depending on our lawyers, and our shareholders. Frankly, we're just glad we didn't have to actually spend time building a good product and hiring people like these folks, since they would've never joined us in the first place."
  - smackfu 12y ago
    It's certainly a tough line. You can say you want to be independent, but if one service charges $$$$ and another charges $0, it's hard to pick the pricey one.
  - pbreit 12y ago
    I don't see this as a sign of lack of independence or evidence of lying. There are very good reasons for anyone to use Facebook places even if the US data is momentarily inferior. These sentiments strike me as unwarranted "gotcha" attempts that have little value.
  - opendais 12y ago
    Tbh, if it was done outside the US/Canada, I'd say it could have been an independent decision. As others have said, outside of NA, all I hear is people complaining about the quality of Foursquare's data. ;) That said...is anyone who actually thought about it really that surprised? They are almost always being deceptive when they make claims of "independence", "nothing will change", etc. The truth is, most companies choose to maximize shareholder value/profits over other ethical constraints because C-level compensation is chained to the shareholder's interests as best as can be managed in most companies. It would have been nice if Facebook was more like Buffer [e.g. Transparent, Honest], but does anyone ever really seeing a company like Buffer growing to even 5% of Facebook's current Market Cap [150 Billion]? Deception works at scale. Politics have proved that quite well, unfortunately.
- fred_durst 12y ago
  And is a great illustration of the potential downsides of highly vertical tech companies.
  - ceejayoz 12y ago
    Not really. They could just as easily have switched from Foursquare to a different third-party location provider.
bigdubs 12y ago
So, this seems like a big deal, but really it just means when you go to tag a place in your post ... the place won't be there and you'll skip the location tag on your post. If anything, it'll improve Facebook Places because people will enter more venues, as I'd imagine more people tag locations in instagram than use Facebook's social checkin feature.
- GFischer 12y ago
  I'd like to see some data, but at least in my country Facebook has vastly more location data than Foursquare. As many have said, Facebooks' data is not necessarily very good (especially lots of duplicates). calinet6 said it best: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7743917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7743917 I do agree that this move will probably contribute better data to Facebook Places.
minikites 12y ago
Hopefully it will get better over time, with Instagram data feeding Places instead of only reading it.
- wlindner 12y ago
  It definitely serves Facebook's location directory of Places the most.
rsobers 12y ago
The immediate result: a diminished user experience. Strategy tax in full effect.
- nighthawk24 12y ago
  No wonder I was not able to find newly opened restaurants and some local spots which were available before the auto-update.
  - loceng 12y ago
    Facebook doesn't seem to measure for quality, they just seem to measure for quantity..
    - antr 12y ago
      FWIW, Foursquare data in Europe is not very good, I think FB geo data is better. I've mentioned this before on HN, Foursquare in Europe is quite unreliable, with places appearing way off the real location, badly categorised (e.g. a restaurant categorised as a bar), etc. I guess quality on these services depends where you are.
      - ZenPro 12y ago
        I am curious how this can be possible? Does FB and Foursquare utilise broadly similar geo-location technology from within the mobile device? Not saying you are incorrect - just wondering if a technical expert could elaborate on the accuracy.
        maxerickson 12y ago
        They buy different starting data sets. I guess most services also use things like the free GNIS data set from the U.S. government (it has good coverage, but the geocoding is not amazing). Edit: And an entity like GNIS actually has less resources than Foursquare gets with its army of users (or at least, a lot less feedback generation).
joeblau 12y ago
I'm not a deep user of Instagram, but I'm wondering if Facebook's places database is better (more meta data, better accuracy, more user feedback, etc) than Foresquare's location information?
- calinet6 12y ago
  No, they are not. Foursquare has well-curated data that's easy for users to edit and update. Duplicates are removed quickly, closed or moved places are updated almost instantly. It's an excellent gamified system for building accurate location data. Facebook, on the other hand, allows you to attach a freeform place to anything (photo, event, review, whatever). These freeform places are not managed well. In a cursory search for a common park in my city, there were 12 duplicates and 8-10 irrelevant only slightly related places returned. The correct place was at the top, but a duplicate was in the top 10. It could be an Apple Maps situation. Bad now, but likely will get better as people use it more.
zaidf 12y ago
To all the people automatically assuming that this is a result of facebook acquiring instagram, what if this actually improves the user experience? What if instagram always wanted to integrate with facebook because they knew it was a better user experience and yet didn't because they knew facebook was instagram's #1 competitor? In that case the acquisition enables a positive. I, for one, could not give a crap about foursquare and yet use facebook on a daily basis. I understand foursquare has its community of supporters but I don't think any objective person will argue that foursquare is on a solid trajectory. In that case, it'd make sense to go with a more established player.
- calinet6 12y ago
  The fact is, Foursquare has a truly excellent place database that's well-curated by users and is highly accurate due to the nature of their product. Facebook does not. It has a mess of duplicate places and incorrect names due to the nature of their product. Hopefully this will be an impetus for improving their location database, but until then I don't see it being a better experience at all. A contrarian "What if" question is fun and good to ask, but it's not automatically valid.
  - lepht 12y ago
    I can appreciated GP's optimism, but as someone who has actually utilized both data sets in various forms this is spot on. Foursquare's data is vastly superior, something I attribute at least partially to the fact that they've built a service that incentivizes checking in, while Facebook is more heavily scrutinized for their questionable privacy practices. It'll be interesting to see if this continues to be the case when 4sq releases Swarm.
- Aqueous 12y ago
  Facebook acquired Instagram not Foursquare.
  - zaidf 12y ago
    woops :)
paulrov 12y ago
The original Instagram had it's own place db which was always way faster than Foursquare and probably Facebook too
bluthru 12y ago
"Instagram Just Geotagged Us To Hell: When Politics Drive Product Decisions, We All Lose" https://medium.com/five-hundred-words/dad4c3736409 https://medium.com/five-hundred-words/dad4c3736409
things 12y ago
They seem to be following the same course with Moves, the fitness tracking app they acquired recently. You used to be able to tag locations with foursquare data, that feature was removed in the latest update. I assume facebook places will be replacing them.
- wlindner 12y ago
  WhatsApp uses Foursquare too (https://developer.foursquare.com/showcase/ https://developer.foursquare.com/showcase/) so, I guess that will use Facebook Places as well.
untog 12y ago
I'd be interested in the views of people that aren't in the US, and especially not in Western countries. Foursquare's database is great in the US, but when I've traveled I've found it to be nowhere near as good - I wonder if - in those cases - Facebook Places is better.
- joefarish 12y ago
  It's pretty good here in London. It's very rare for me to find a place that doesn't already exist in their Database.

47 points by wlindner 12y ago

mcnully 12y ago

Facebook dropping Foursquare for Facebook Places

wlindner 12y ago
Bingo.

ceejayoz 12y ago

Seems like a no-brainer. Facebook owning Instagram means this is just Facebook ditching a competitor's product for their own.

wlindner 12y ago
After Facebook acquired Instagram they were really clear that they wanted them to stay independent. I wonder how "independently" they made this decision to switch to Facebook Places instead of Foursquare. Instagram ads are most likely just Facebook's new ad platform. Facebook just removed their Camera app from the app store (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2457866,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2457866,00.asp) because Instagram IS their Camera app.
- potatolicious 12y ago
  > "After Facebook acquired Instagram they were really clear that they wanted them to stay independent." Snort. Giggle. Boy have I heard that one before. Everyone says that about every acquisition that isn't an acquihire. Hell, a lot of the time they even mean it. I have yet to see a single acquisition that promised independence and autonomy actually maintain it for an extended period of time (say, multiple years).
- randomdrake 12y ago
  I can't think of any recent acquisitions where the same type of lies weren't uttered. "We're so happy to be joining Billion Corp. We feel that they will let us stay independent and stick to our goals. We will continue to provide the same awesome experience you all came to know and love before we sold out." "We're so happy to be acquiring talent instead of finding it. We will totally not, not make their project theirs instead of ours, depending on our lawyers, and our shareholders. Frankly, we're just glad we didn't have to actually spend time building a good product and hiring people like these folks, since they would've never joined us in the first place."
- smackfu 12y ago
  It's certainly a tough line. You can say you want to be independent, but if one service charges $$$$ and another charges $0, it's hard to pick the pricey one.
- pbreit 12y ago
  I don't see this as a sign of lack of independence or evidence of lying. There are very good reasons for anyone to use Facebook places even if the US data is momentarily inferior. These sentiments strike me as unwarranted "gotcha" attempts that have little value.
- opendais 12y ago
  Tbh, if it was done outside the US/Canada, I'd say it could have been an independent decision. As others have said, outside of NA, all I hear is people complaining about the quality of Foursquare's data. ;) That said...is anyone who actually thought about it really that surprised? They are almost always being deceptive when they make claims of "independence", "nothing will change", etc. The truth is, most companies choose to maximize shareholder value/profits over other ethical constraints because C-level compensation is chained to the shareholder's interests as best as can be managed in most companies. It would have been nice if Facebook was more like Buffer [e.g. Transparent, Honest], but does anyone ever really seeing a company like Buffer growing to even 5% of Facebook's current Market Cap [150 Billion]? Deception works at scale. Politics have proved that quite well, unfortunately.
fred_durst 12y ago
And is a great illustration of the potential downsides of highly vertical tech companies.
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  Not really. They could just as easily have switched from Foursquare to a different third-party location provider.

bigdubs 12y ago

So, this seems like a big deal, but really it just means when you go to tag a place in your post ... the place won't be there and you'll skip the location tag on your post. If anything, it'll improve Facebook Places because people will enter more venues, as I'd imagine more people tag locations in instagram than use Facebook's social checkin feature.

GFischer 12y ago
I'd like to see some data, but at least in my country Facebook has vastly more location data than Foursquare. As many have said, Facebooks' data is not necessarily very good (especially lots of duplicates). calinet6 said it best: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7743917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7743917 I do agree that this move will probably contribute better data to Facebook Places.

minikites 12y ago

Hopefully it will get better over time, with Instagram data feeding Places instead of only reading it.

wlindner 12y ago
It definitely serves Facebook's location directory of Places the most.

rsobers 12y ago

The immediate result: a diminished user experience. Strategy tax in full effect.

nighthawk24 12y ago
No wonder I was not able to find newly opened restaurants and some local spots which were available before the auto-update.
- loceng 12y ago
  Facebook doesn't seem to measure for quality, they just seem to measure for quantity..
  - antr 12y ago
    FWIW, Foursquare data in Europe is not very good, I think FB geo data is better. I've mentioned this before on HN, Foursquare in Europe is quite unreliable, with places appearing way off the real location, badly categorised (e.g. a restaurant categorised as a bar), etc. I guess quality on these services depends where you are.
    - ZenPro 12y ago
      I am curious how this can be possible? Does FB and Foursquare utilise broadly similar geo-location technology from within the mobile device? Not saying you are incorrect - just wondering if a technical expert could elaborate on the accuracy.
      - maxerickson 12y ago
        They buy different starting data sets. I guess most services also use things like the free GNIS data set from the U.S. government (it has good coverage, but the geocoding is not amazing). Edit: And an entity like GNIS actually has less resources than Foursquare gets with its army of users (or at least, a lot less feedback generation).

joeblau 12y ago

I'm not a deep user of Instagram, but I'm wondering if Facebook's places database is better (more meta data, better accuracy, more user feedback, etc) than Foresquare's location information?

calinet6 12y ago
No, they are not. Foursquare has well-curated data that's easy for users to edit and update. Duplicates are removed quickly, closed or moved places are updated almost instantly. It's an excellent gamified system for building accurate location data. Facebook, on the other hand, allows you to attach a freeform place to anything (photo, event, review, whatever). These freeform places are not managed well. In a cursory search for a common park in my city, there were 12 duplicates and 8-10 irrelevant only slightly related places returned. The correct place was at the top, but a duplicate was in the top 10. It could be an Apple Maps situation. Bad now, but likely will get better as people use it more.

zaidf 12y ago

To all the people automatically assuming that this is a result of facebook acquiring instagram, what if this actually improves the user experience? What if instagram always wanted to integrate with facebook because they knew it was a better user experience and yet didn't because they knew facebook was instagram's #1 competitor? In that case the acquisition enables a positive. I, for one, could not give a crap about foursquare and yet use facebook on a daily basis. I understand foursquare has its community of supporters but I don't think any objective person will argue that foursquare is on a solid trajectory. In that case, it'd make sense to go with a more established player.

calinet6 12y ago
The fact is, Foursquare has a truly excellent place database that's well-curated by users and is highly accurate due to the nature of their product. Facebook does not. It has a mess of duplicate places and incorrect names due to the nature of their product. Hopefully this will be an impetus for improving their location database, but until then I don't see it being a better experience at all. A contrarian "What if" question is fun and good to ask, but it's not automatically valid.
- lepht 12y ago
  I can appreciated GP's optimism, but as someone who has actually utilized both data sets in various forms this is spot on. Foursquare's data is vastly superior, something I attribute at least partially to the fact that they've built a service that incentivizes checking in, while Facebook is more heavily scrutinized for their questionable privacy practices. It'll be interesting to see if this continues to be the case when 4sq releases Swarm.
Aqueous 12y ago
Facebook acquired Instagram not Foursquare.
- zaidf 12y ago
  woops :)

paulrov 12y ago

The original Instagram had it's own place db which was always way faster than Foursquare and probably Facebook too

bluthru 12y ago

"Instagram Just Geotagged Us To Hell: When Politics Drive Product Decisions, We All Lose" https://medium.com/five-hundred-words/dad4c3736409 https://medium.com/five-hundred-words/dad4c3736409

things 12y ago

They seem to be following the same course with Moves, the fitness tracking app they acquired recently. You used to be able to tag locations with foursquare data, that feature was removed in the latest update. I assume facebook places will be replacing them.

wlindner 12y ago
WhatsApp uses Foursquare too (https://developer.foursquare.com/showcase/ https://developer.foursquare.com/showcase/) so, I guess that will use Facebook Places as well.

untog 12y ago

I'd be interested in the views of people that aren't in the US, and especially not in Western countries. Foursquare's database is great in the US, but when I've traveled I've found it to be nowhere near as good - I wonder if - in those cases - Facebook Places is better.

joefarish 12y ago
It's pretty good here in London. It's very rare for me to find a place that doesn't already exist in their Database.